Ohio Data Leak Gets Pinned On The Intern

from the passing-the-buck-eye dept

You might remember the recent data leak in Ohio, where personal info on a million or so people was lost, after a storage device containing it was stolen from an intern's car. The intern, who apparently took the device home with him as part of a security protocol, has now been fired by the state, and says he's being made the scapegoat for the loss. Despite the governor's claims to the contrary, of course the intern's being scapegoated, even though he apparently was just doing what he was told. That's how things work with data leaks: the buck is passed, and responsibility shirked. In this instance, the state can say the responsible party has been fired, glossing over the fact that he was apparently just following directions he'd been given, and that the real problem here was a flawed security plan that was either devised by an idiot, or, more likely, by somebody who didn't take the security of other people's personal info very seriously. That's the problem here: nobody seems to care when it's other people's data. There are never any real ramifications from these leaks, as long as companies or governments are seen to have some security plan in place, even if it's not a good one. Until that changes -- and the scapegoating and responsibility shirking stops -- data leaks and breaches are going to keep on coming.

Reader Comments

Intern Scapegoat

The intern might have been fired for leaving the tape in his car unlocked, not exactly following the procedure. Several heads rolled other than the interns also, three levels up plus the two contractors that set the plan up.